Steven Aden

Steven H. Aden is senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom (www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org), a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family. Aden heads ADF’s work to defend the sanctity of life in court from its Washington, D.C., regional service center.

In the last few days, one skirmish among dozens in the coast-to-coast legal abortion war came to an end in Indiana when the state and Planned Parenthood reached an agreement that formalizes a series of rulings by federal courts over the last two years.

What if we could sit and watch videos of our unborn children: videos of them at age 24 weeks or 30 weeks or 36 weeks? Videos of them sucking their thumbs (in real time) or yawning (in real time) or stretching or doing any number of other things (in real time)?

Nellie Gray left the life arena this week. We mourn her death. Already, we miss her voice and her fight for all life, born and preborn. She was a woman whose personal vision and relentless drive brought together hundreds of thousands of people from all racial, ethnic, economic, and creedal backgrounds to cry out for America to stop killing children in the womb. And she did this every year, for almost 40 years.

To protect mothers as well as their preborn children, Arizona lawmakers passed H.B. 1036—a bill banning elective abortions after 20 weeks. Although the legislation was aptly titled “The Mother’s Health and Safety Act,” the ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights sued to block its implementation. But a federal judge just ruled for mothers, and as a result, the law will take effect in Arizona.

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare on June 28, supporters immediately pronounced “game over” on the fight against President Obama’s abortion pill mandate as well. Their thinking was that since the overall health care act had been upheld, the mandates and rules proceeding from it had been upheld, too.

Over the past few months, the ties between the Obama administration and Planned Parenthood have become more and more evident. Not only was the president initially elected with the strong support of Planned Parenthood officials, but prior to the issuance of the HHS abortion pill mandate, Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Cecile Richards was brought in to advise Obama on how and when to do so. (Since then, Planned Parenthood’s former media director Tait Sye has been selected to serve as a deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS.)

An undeniable tectonic shift toward the pro-life position has been evident for some time in this country. As a result, Planned Parenthood, America’s biggest abortionist, has suffered a PR problem among young and old alike, many of whom continually find themselves less and less crazy about the idea of killing children for convenience.

There is an undeniable progression from bad to worse in the culture of death. Or, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, who was paraphrasing Jesus of Nazareth, “All things are possible to those who don’t believe.” Therefore, just when it seems we’ve seen man at his worst, a new example of his wickedness arises and reminds us that we haven’t seen anything yet.

After all we’ve seen and heard regarding abortion in the 21st century—all the justifications for gender-selective abortions, for killing preborn handicapped babies, and even for having a window of time in which it’s acceptable to kill children after birth—proponents of the culture of death still surprise many people from time to time.

Barack Obama enjoyed the robust support of Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby throughout his campaign for president. As president, he has demonstrated his gratitude for Big Abortion by the customary means of public largesse, mandating that all Americans pay for “free” abortion pills, sterilization, and contraceptives regardless of whether their consciences call it murder, and making lucrative “Plum Book” appointments for abortion industry leaders who can help him sell his campaign against human life.

Political campaigns make strange bedfellows. In some cases, they attract seemingly unrelated groups who donate money for a cause they both support.A perfect demonstration of this was seen recently in Anchorage, Alaska, where the push to amend the city’s non-discrimination code to include “sexual orientation” and “transgender identity” brought together Tim Gill, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest.